I actually prefer the PS3 for PSX gaming. The smoothing option seems a lot better (it's case by case though, sometimes I turn it off). It's also really nice being able to create basically infinite virtual memory cards. I bought an adapter years ago to transfer all my old memory cards to my PS3 HDD, so I've been able to salvage all that from my childhood.

I actually had some serious trouble with Xenogears on the PS2. There's a weird well known issue with one of the late game bosses causing it to freeze all the time. It's luck of the draw if you can get past it without freezing and I was able to finally after some point. I'm not sure if the PS3 is error free on that part or not, or maybe the digital version works better.

Hmm... I'm not too versed in platformers and racing games on the PSX, hehe. The PSX version of San Francisco Rush is pretty rough, I think the N64 one is better. Maybe there's some good Need for Speed games though, I really enjoyed the old ones. Jet Moto was one of those games everyone had. Crash Team Racing was excellent.

I've always wanted to play the Tomba games. I think Spyro has aged kind of badly, but the Crash games hold up decently since they're fixed camera angles and not truly 3D. Some stuff like the 3D Gex games or Croc... those might be best left in the past, haha. Croc might be fine, but Gex looks pretty bad looking back on it. 3D platformers is the one genre that is kind of hit or miss for me to go back to sometimes.

Yeah, as a matter of fact the screen that's attached to it is actually quite rare to find these days, at least that's what I've heard.

I've also heard the PS3 has some compatibility issues with PSX games? The PS2 handles it better, as far as I know.

Any good games you could recommend (make sure to check that they have a PAL release, because I don't have a modchip and the swap trick is a pain in the rear)? Mostly looking at platformers and racing games, but anything else would be helpful. I can recommend one game in particular, a pretty underrated gem that is actually quite a difficult game - Pandemonium! - a 2.5D platformer (2D gameplay in 3D world and structures).